Character Setup. O:ND

Operation RAPIER

As you start to come around on the 'Unwarranted Risk' your near term memory starts to return and you remember the past few days and the past few weeks with more clarity.

5 weeks ago:

You were approached by General Jason Atreides and Admiral Rom Sandecker to perform an operation of upmost secrecy. They needed a military trained team who no longer had official ties to the Confederation military infrastructure. You were asked to do two things:

1. Extract Guyan Tetsuyama from a military outpost in the Pegasus Sector. You were told Guyan was investigating a series of disturbing events that suggested a group within the Confederation with a more totalitarian agenda was planning an extreme and aggressive takeover of confederation space and the confederation government. Guyan's activities had uncovered compelling evidence and then communications with her had been cutoff.

2. Test the newest vessel in the Confed fleet. The 'Unwarranted Risk' has interleaving singularity drives which has the potential to change the way faster than light travel is undertaken. It also has an Epsilon class AI, a brand new class of computer system. More important though, the vessel had been in space dock at a research facility orbiting Agravain Prime and was less likely to have been tampered with by extremists.

You and your team agreed.

4 weeks ago:

Having located Guyan through her cyberlink you pull her off planet just as the extremists close in. To your shock and horror, as you make your escape from the planet's surface, the planet's biosphere is obliterated by some kind of biogenic weapon. Returning to the 'Unwarranted Risk' via a suborbital spacecraft, you find yourselves in a space battle with a fleet of Confederation frigates apparently under the control of the extremists. You are heavily outgunned and in the midst of heavy combat you realize that your AI, 'Tatanya,' is working against you and not with you.  Benjamin manages to take the AI off line before it destroys the ship. Nonetheless, as your vessel gets battered you abandon ship via escape pods. Soon after, the fleet leaves.

With nowhere else to go you make your way back to the 'Risk' and discover it is in a really bad way. You have no choice but to initiate an encrypted distress signal and put yourselves into cryogenic stasis.

1.5 weeks ago:

You wake up in a pristine medical facility on the other side of The Gulf. You learn that you are on an asteroid called Ancyra that orbits the planet 'Near Dark.' You are informed that the vessel that rescued you surveyed seven sectors (a big chunk of space) on the Confederation side of the Gulf and discovered that all of the planets had been artificially made incapable of sustaining life. They returned after a close call with an aggressive starship that identified itself as confederation.

You are given access to a comfortable suite of rooms. You have access to the local computer systems for news and entertainment. You are told that you are under quarantine until your medical results check out (obvious concern that you are carrying some sort of plague.)

2 days ago:

You are told that your ship just blew its way out of the hangar in which it was stored after the AI was brought back on line.  You meet Commander Jana Layton of the Near Dark local defense force (not Confederation and for those who have been checking the news, there is some tension between the two groups.)

She informs you that a suborbital shuttle left your ship and landed, probably crashed because of atmospheric conditions, after it escaped the hangar.  The 'Unwarranted Risk' is now in orbit and it has been decided that it should be left alone for the time being as its singularity drive is heavily damaged and it won't be leaving.

She offers you a job. She tells you that she is forming a special forces and policing group called RAPIER that she wants you to be a part of it.  She says you are perfect as you all have military training but you don't have ties to the local confederation military (sounds familiar.) 

She offers to fund you and repair your ship once you investigate the causes of its peculiar behavior.  You agree. (We can discuss what additional negotiations you may have made with her.)

Minutes ago:

You wake up onboard the 'Risk.' After a few moments of feeling a little disoriented and confused you remember that Layton has put you onto a virtual copy of the ship at a time just before they turned the AI on. The hope is that you can discover something about the goals of the AI, Tatanya.

Welcome to Outlands: Near Dark.